Journalist finds something worse than being sued for libel

It's probably a short list, but having someone sniffing out your sources would probably be up there.

Christopher Byron knows. The pugnacious, prolific financial writer is not only being sued for a story he wrote in Red Herring, but more recently he discovered someone managed to talk AT&T into revealing all of his phone calls for the month he worked on that story.

"They were trying to steal my most valuable professional information," Byron said -- the identity of his sources.

Byron feels there is a connection, but the company he wrote about denies it.

The libel suit stems from a story he wrote in the September issue of Red Herring, a once-booming tech-business magazine in San Francisco. The story, "Feds, Face Recognition, and a Fishy Fund," advised investors to steer clear of Imagis Technologies.

The story, still available at redherring.com (search for Imagis), called Imagis "a plaything for denizens of the penny stock world," explored a "mysterious Boston financier" who invested in the company and pumped up its stock price, and concluded, "As for Imagis' actual business -- forget it." Although revenue was up, he said, cash was down, and "losses continue to mount. "

Imagis, a Vancouver, B.C., firm, makes facial recognition software. Its tools are used to try to catch terrorists at Oakland International Airport, among other sites. Its chairman is Oliver "Buck" Revell, a former deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and a man who has been on the plaintiff's end of at least two other high-profile libel suits. Its chief executive says Byron's column used innuendo to disparage its business, alarming investors and customers.

"It contained a bunch of quite emotional-type comments which we felt were designed to denigrate the company," said Chief Executive Officer Iain Drummond.

ALARMED BY RECORDS THEFT

Byron, who pens the Herring's Contrarian column and also writes a column for the New York Post, is the author of a new book on Martha Stewart, "Martha Inc." He and Herring Editor Blaise Zerega stand by the story and are alarmed by the phone records theft.

He didn't discover that someone was after his phone records until about a month ago when his wife -- who assists him in his reporting -- fielded a call at their home office from someone claiming to be with the phone company and asking if they'd been having trouble with their password.

The caller then asked the Byrons for the password. They didn't give it to him, but instead called AT&T. The company said it had fielded several calls from Byron and his wife, asking about their password.

The Byrons said they had placed no such calls.

The tactic is what hackers typically call "social engineering," in which rather than using computer prowess to reveal data, they use guile and sweet talk to procure sensitive information.

48 CALLS TO AT&T

Eventually, Byron learned that whoever was after his phone records called 48 times, going back 10 weeks. Ultimately, someone answering a phone at an AT&T 800 line apparently read to the caller a list of 94 phone numbers Byron had dialed from his home in July.

In that month, Byron said, "I was doing one thing: I was working on the story on the Imagis company in Vancouver for Red Herring magazine."

IMAGIS DENIES WRONGDOING

While Imagis has many complaints about Byron's story, it adamantly denies any connection to the effort to obtain his phone records.

"There may be in his mind a connection," said Howard Shapray, a lawyer for Imagis, "but I have asked his lawyer to give me any smidgen of evidence, any scintilla of evidence that would suggest there was a connection between what he alleges happened and the company I represent, and there has been no response."

Byron acknowledges this, saying, "Do I know somebody mixed up with this Imagis crew stole these phone records? No. Do I suspect agents of them might be involved? Sure I suspect it."

He won't have proof until he finds out who placed the calls, and he's now trying to wrest that information from AT&T, his phone company.

AT&T ultimately told Byron the caller was from one of two phone numbers in Texas, but it has not released the numbers to him. He claims the FBI also is not cooperating.

An AT&T spokesman said in an e-mail, "AT&T security is currently involved in a significant, thorough and active investigation with law enforcement authorities looking into this matter. . . . Beyond that, we're not going to comment."

As for the libel, Imagis filed suit in Vancouver, and Red Herring is trying to move the case to the United States.

SWEEPING UP AFTER DUSTY: Given the way the post-World Series soap opera between Giants owner Peter Magowan and former manager Dusty Baker played out, I'd have thought San Francisco sports talk radio station KNBR might have sought out Joan Walsh for her comments.

Walsh, vice president for news at Salon.com, wrote the first lengthy treatment of the deteriorating Baker-Magowan relationship in San Francisco magazine's September issue. When her 5,000-word story came out, it was the talk of the baseball town.

But when I called Walsh, she said with some wonder, "No one ever tried to have me on. Given that they have people on who cover interesting local sports news and controversies, I thought it would be a natural."

But considering that KNBR is a business partner with the Giants going back to 1979, when the station started broadcasting Giants' games, and that the station also owns about a 2 percent stake in the team, Walsh senses that maybe other forces kept her off the air.

"It would be a little too controversial and too sensitive within the Giants organization," she said.

Although I couldn't reach a Giants representative Wednesday -- they were likely busy announcing Baker's replacement -- when I had looked into a similar issue this past summer, the team said it has no influence into what KNBR puts on the air.

And KNBR's top honcho, Tony Salvadore -- he's the senior vice president and market manager for Susquehanna Radio Corp.'s San Francisco properties, which include KNBR -- also said the team has no influence. Furthermore, he added, nothing nefarious precluded any potential Walsh gabfests.

Instead, he said, no one asked that station to put her on. "We were never approached. Had we been, we probably would have had her on," he said. "Because you write an article doesn't mean you're going to get on KNBR. There was never any discussion about this."

SAVE THE ARCHIVE: Pacifica Radio, the five-station network that includes Berkeley's KPFA, 94.1 FM, is trying to preserve and digitize its archive, which it says is the nation's oldest public radio archive. It includes more than 47,000 recordings of speeches and interviews with such figures as Malcolm X, Patty Hearst and Jack Kerouac, as well as gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Pentagon Papers hearings.

The network needs $200,000 for the project and will hold a fund-raiser from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday featuring some of the rare recordings. Information and some audio clips are online at pacificaarchives.org.